Opinion

• Opinion

  Debate | Is Biden’s Obama throwback cabinet good or bad for millennial Jews?

  This week, President-elect Joe Biden announced many of his cabinet picks. And to some, they were eerily familiar, names of people who had served under President Obama or who were adjacent to Obama’s cabinet. Is some good old fashioned stability just what the doctor ordered? Or are we overdue for some serious change? We asked…

  By Ari Hoffman and Joel Swanson

  8 min read
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  Opinion

  Stop comparing my relationship to Kamala’s. Not all interracial marriages are the same.

  Recently, a Jewish writer friend told me I should write about being “a Jewish guy married to a woman of color.” Supposedly, an essay on the topic would be of interest because Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is married to an Ashkenazi gentleman. I had to disagree. The idea that I am joined to Harris and…

  By Jay Deitcher Dec 2, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  The real reason so many Orthodox Jews voted for Trump

  President-elect Biden received the most votes ever cast in a presidential election, surpassing the previous record set by Barack Obama in 2008. But soon-to-be-ex-President Donald Trump also won more votes than Obama ever did. Close to half the Americans who voted in the election did so for Donald Trump. Why? It’s something many Democrats are…

  Dec 1, 2020 | 3 min read

Columnists View All

• Jodi Rudoren This is my last column as editor of the Forward

  

• Jay Michaelson Mamdani’s victory is an opportunity for Jews to relearn the art of disagreement

  

• Rob Eshman Pro-Palestinian protesters are suddenly supporting Iran. They might want to talk to some Palestinians

  

• Nora Berman Did Netanyahu coerce Trump into attacking Iran? No — but he tried with Obama

  

• Dan Perry For Trump and Netanyahu, statecraft is now synonymous with stagecraft

  

• Emily Tamkin Zohran Mamdani’s victory proves it: The ‘gotcha’ mode of fighting antisemitism has to go

  

The Latest

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  Opinion

  Pro-union conservatives are trying to take over the Republican Party. Oren Cass is leading the way.

  Oren Cass is a pro-union conservative. If such a thing sounds strange to you, you’re not alone. We’re used to thinking about the Democratic Party as representing the working class, while Republicans are better known for tax cuts for the wealthy and free-market economic policies that hurt laborers. But the data suggest a more complicated…

  By Batya Ungar-Sargon Nov 30, 2020 | 10 min read
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  Opinion

  After 4 years of Trump, China’s abuses are worse than ever. What Biden must do to stop them

  Joe Biden’s foreign policy team includes many familiar faces from the Obama Administration. Antony Blinken, Biden’s pick to be the next Secretary of State, was Deputy Secretary of State in January 2017. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was National Security Advisor to the Vice President at the time. The list goes on. But though the…

  By Coby Goldberg Nov 30, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Why a post-pandemic world needs Birthright more than ever

  The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the suspension of a host of in-person programs, in and outside the Jewish world, including Birthright Israel’s iconic ten-day peer educational trips. With the prospect of an effective vaccine on the horizon, programs like Birthright that give primacy to intensive peer-to-peer interaction will no doubt be relaunched. But given…

  By Leonard Saxe Nov 30, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Birthright’s insulting obsession with intermarriage is erasing young Jews

  The results are in: Birthright is a success. Or at least, this is the message of a new report out of The Cohen Center’s Jewish Futures Project which measured the impact of the ten-day free trip to Israel for Jewish North Americans. But what do they mean by success? A closer look at the study reveals…

  By Jennifer Thompson Nov 30, 2020 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Go ahead, call it a cult: I’m grateful for my Peloton

  This is an adaptation of our weekly Shabbat newsletter, sent by our editor-in-chief on Friday afternoons. Sign up here to get the Forward’s free newsletters delivered to your inbox. Maybe my strangest personal development in this strangest of years is that I have started going to church. Not, you know, actually going, of course —…

  By Jodi Rudoren Nov 27, 2020 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Jews died on Mayor Dinkins’ watch. Here’s why the Forward endorsed him anyway.

  The death of Mayor David Dinkins is a sad moment for those who cherished New York as what he liked to call a “gorgeous mosaic.” The Forward had favored him when, in 1989, he narrowly won the mayoral race against Rudy Giuliani, who then was the United States attorney in the city. I was the…

  By Seth Lipsky Nov 25, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Alejandro Mayorkas’ historic nomination is a wake up call: Stop erasing Sepharadim.

  The incoming Biden Administration is already making major waves with a number of firsts: the first woman Secretary of the Treasury, first woman Intelligence Chief, and of course the first Black, Asian-American, woman Vice President. But there’s another major first for a different nominee: Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s pick for Department of Homeland Security Secretary, will…

  By Ethan Marcus Nov 25, 2020 | 4 min read
• Letters

  Op-eds should come with bias warnings, just like Twitter

  Dear Editor, Just as Twitter and Facebook now put up warnings or don’t allow certain posts I think you need to create a policy to inform your readers about the bias of the people providing articles in the Forward. Mr. Hammer claims that Mr. Trump was the best president ever for Israel and that’s pretty…

  By Scott Shabot Nov 25, 2020 | < 1 min read